Show of the week: Why Anzac with Sam Neill, ABC, 8.30pm

April in Australia and New Zealand is traditionally a month of Anzac-inspired memories and remembrance – events recalled and the public act of that recollection – that play out in rituals designed to bond the nation. Dawn services and marches around the country, newspaper spreads, two-up down the local boozer and a raft of TV programming bind us to a common ethos and self perception: of mateship, sacrifice and service, larrikin individuality and selfless heroism. The fact that our foundation myth is based on an almighty military balls-up rather than a victory is a unique quirk, one that Sam Neill investigates in some detail in this enlightening account of the national story we share with our friends across the ditch. Most Australians don’t have a close connection to Gallipoli. Neill does. The veteran actor comes from a long line of military men, several of whom saw service during WWI at the Somme and Gallipoli. For him, the events of a century ago are personal fodder for deep contemplation.

The question that exercises him most is: Why Anzac? Why, of all the battles fought by our two nations, was the catastrophic debacle at Gallipoli elevated to a foundation myth; why did the “murderous slopes” of Anzac Cove become a spiritual place for the generations that followed? Neill follows three of his ancestors from New Zealand to the Aegean and campaigns in Crete, France and Belgium. He visits cemeteries, reads from letters home and recalls childhood memories of how the experience of war trickled down through the generations of his family. His insights are given larger historical and social context by academics, and with their help he traces the origin of the myth as a diversion from the incompetence of the military leaders, through its adoption by two nations and how its popularity has ebbed and flowed over the decades. Neill says he hates militarism and loathes nationalism but admires those who serve, and while this effort is a vigorous interrogation that suggests cynical motives on the part of the originators and hints at misplaced fervour among those who have adopted it so passionately, the role and motives of those who took part is never criticised. Which, of course, is fundamental to the narrative of Anzac as a tale of class division that explains and justifies our ingrained anti-authoritarian nature. Why Anzac is part of a larger tradition that questions the value and authenticity of our national myth (see also the ABC online project The G Word: Australian Reactions to Gallipoli) and could be seen to serve an anti-authoritarian agenda of its own. But as an essay on how to find meaning in the wasteful, futile moments of war, it falls in line with a long and comforting tradition. 
Gordon Farrer

Hipsters, SBS2, 8.30pm

Tonight’s exploration of the hipster “subculture”, if it can still be called that given its reach, see host Samuel Johnson exploring the fascination with all things vintage, be it hairstyles, clothes, typewriters or hi-fi equipment. He heads to Tokyo, arguably home of the world’s best-dressed “hipsters” and a large vintage underground scene; talks to music writer Simon Reynolds author of a  book on the retro revival, and chats to LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang and blues singer Steve Smyth about whether there’s anything left, musically, that hasn’t been done. Then he heads to London to meet hipsters who are rejecting social media in “digital detox”. How will their friends cope without seeing their Instagrammed brunches?

NCIS: LA, Ten, 9.30pm

Just how much crime goes on in the navy these days? Are there as many real-life NCIS branches as there are franchises of the TV show? All we can learn from NCIS: LA is that there’s very rarely any actual seafaring,  just a lot of traipsing around Venice Beach looking for perps/clues. Tonight Sam (LL Cool J) is back in the office after his gunshot wound, and ready for dodging more bullets as the team investigates a case of two missing Afghani soldiers who had been secretly training in the US. Turns out terrorists were after them as   they have knowledge about the Afghan army’s plan to cut drug trafficking in Afghanistan. Despite initial distrust of the NCIS team, Sam bonds with one of the soldiers and sorts it all out.

Trent Parke: The Black Rose, ABC, 10pm

The first Australian to become a member of the Magnum Photo Agency, Trent Parke took up photography at age 12, after the death of his mother, and once worked as a photojournalist for The Australian.  For the past seven years he  has been working on an epic photographic project, The Black Rose, and this doco follows Parke and his family as he prepares for a huge exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia (now on show). What began as a project working to the theme of “home”, became a seven-year journey of uncovering lost memories of his traumatic childhood, and resulted in a cathartic experience for Parke and his family. The Black Rose is a moving film, and visually stunning.
Kylie Northover

PAY TV

Togetherness, Showcase, 7.30pm

This new half-hour HBO series has some bright little sparks of comedy – little flares, even – but it doesn’t immediately ignite. It centres on the not-so-happy home of TV sound composer Brett (Mark Duplass) and his wife, Michelle (Melanie Lynskey), whose sex life has sputtered out, and not just because of the new baby. Their house is about to get a whole lot fuller because Brett’s failed-actor friend Alex (Steve Zissis) has moved on to their couch, and Michelle’s sister Tina (Amanda Peet) also suddenly needs a place to stay. The best bits involve the prickly but almost tender friendship developing between Alex and Tina –  the actors are both appealing, and they get some good scenes and dialogue to work with. There’s poignancy in Michelle’s and Brett’s situation, but their scenes are less believable. Worth a look.

MOVIES

Alfie (2004), Romance Movies (pay TV), 4.50pm

In the original Alfie, made in 1966 by director Lewis Gilbert and featuring an iconic turn of considerable charm from Michael Caine, the romantic indiscretions of the title character had a valid cultural underpinning. The movie showed audiences a new London, where the class structure was breaking up and social change was accelerating. Four decades later and transplanted to New York, the remake is stripped of any such lining. As the new Alfie, a British limo driver availing himself to Manhattan’s bounty, Jude Law proves he also has considerable charm, but the result is manipulative and purposeless. It asks us to enjoy Alfie’s slightly wicked ways – no one had yet wigged that Law’s seductive appeal could satisfy darker purposes – and then pity him as he realises the hollowness of his actions, which is neither original nor particularly satisfying. Only occasionally, when Susan Sarandon’s knowledgeable older woman coolly pricks Alfie’s bubble, does the film suggest it may have something to say about men and women.

The Last Mitterrand (2005), SBS2, 2am (Wednesday)

Robert Guediguian’s adaptation of journalist Georges-Marc Benamou’s memoir about his time with the French president is more a study of how a powerful man approaches his final days than an attempt to establish historical veracity. Quoting Hugo and referencing Rimbaud and Petain, Francois Mitterrand (Michel Bouquet) is a Lear-like figure, wandering France in the final days of his 14-year stint as head of state even as cancer ravages his body, all the while cajoling and cautioning his young biographer, Antoine (Jalil Lespert). The contentious topic of Mitterrand’s involvement with the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government during World War II is the focus of Antoine’s questioning, but the film suggests that the only truth worth ultimately pursuing is how you’ll be remembered when you’re gone. As a socialist shadowed by personal and political scandal, Mitterrand nonetheless believes history’s textbooks can’t deny him. ‘‘I’m not a page that can be easily torn out,’’ he defiantly declares.

Berberian Sound Studio, (2012), stan.com.au

In filmmaker Peter Strickland’s increasingly uneasy second feature a timid 1970s English sound mixer, Gilderoy (Toby Jones) is summoned to an Italian post-production facility to work on a horror film. Cast adrift in the perpetually nocturnal environment, Gilderoy’s craft starts to assume the makings of a ritual he  can’t quite comprehend as screams are perpetually recorded and his  director issues cryptic warnings. It’s a psychological horror film about the making of a horror film, an analog era nightmare.
Craig Mathieson